Undivided Heart

                I came across a sticky note I had stuck in my Bible, specifically in the Book of Psalms.  On it was a short list of passages and I had scrawled “Study Out”.  I remember writing the note because I was in the midst of writing several papers my Sr. year of Bible college and knew that I didn’t have the time to put the research and thought into these passages that I wanted to.  So I had made a note for when I was through with school and would have the time.  Almost a year and a half later, being married and with a 4 ½ month old daughter, here I am looking at this sticky note.   The first passage on it was Psalm 86:11 and I started there.

                “Teach me your way, O Lord, and I will walk in Your truth:  give me an undivided heart, that I may fear Your name.”

                The Hebrew word for heart is also used for consider, mind, and understanding and its definition is “most interior organ”.    Our definition of the word heart today is the seat of the affections or sensibilities; the source of life and motion in any organization.   However insight from the Holman Illustrated Bible Dictionary shed light on what the word meant in the day of this Psalm.  “Heart – the Hebrew language had no word for conscience, so the word heart was often used to express this concept.  ~Job 27:6, I Samuel 25:31,/ I John 3:19-21”                “The heart is the root of the problem, this is the place where God does his work in an individual.” Ez. 11:19 “The heart is the dwelling place of God”.

                So saying the verse by adding the additional meanings would read something like this:
Join my will, my understanding, my mind, my source of tenderness and thoughts, my inmost organ, the center of me to fear, to dread, to make afraid, to reverence Your name, Your renown, Your character, Your position.

Put this way it reminds me of Rom. 7:21-25a:    So “I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me.  For in my inner being I delight in God’s law;  but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me.  What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death?  Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!”
I in and of myself cannot walk in truth, cannot follow God’s way, cannot be good.  Only by Him teaching me, helping me, and changing me can I accomplish this.  It gives me relief because I do want to do good, I want to live my life in a way that honors the God who took the Cross for me!
Gal. 5:16-18 “So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature.  For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature.  They are in conflict with each other, so that you do not do what you want.  But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.”  The Bible says my heart can be deceived, we see evidence of that in the first sin in the Garden of Eden.  My heart is desperately wicked and is the root of problems.  I cannot trust my own heart, how then should I follow it?  Rather I need to follow the Holy Spirit of God.

                What does Psalm 86:11 mean to me?  Lord, take my heart.  Put all of its aspects together & cause is to do only one thing.  Fear thy name.  Teach me Your way, Unite my heart that I will be able to walk in your Truth and Fear thy name. 
Rather than . . . walk in my own way, in others’ way, in Satan’s way and be behind all kinds of wicked and hurt and trouble.  Let me not fear or come to revere anything or anyone more than You.  I, in myself am faulty and will fall – but if You have my heart Lord – there will be good.  There will be glory, for You, good works for You, honor for You!  May people not see me or my way but You and Your way and may they give You their hearts, their fear, honor, and glory! Amen!